1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a maintenance device performing maintenance of a liquid ejecting head and a liquid ejecting apparatus including the maintenance device.
2. Related Art
In the related art, as a type of a liquid ejecting apparatus, an ink jet type printer which forms an image by ejecting a liquid from a liquid ejecting head on a medium such as a paper has been known. In such a printer, a maintenance device is usually provided in order to maintain characteristics in ejecting the liquid from the liquid ejecting head.
For example, a printer disclosed in JP-A-2005-212351 has an ink wiping device as such a maintenance device which wipes ink (liquid) attached to a recording head (a liquid ejecting head). The ink wiping device has a feeding shaft on which a long-shaped ink absorption body (a liquid absorption body) is wound in a roll shape and a winding shaft which winds the ink absorption body which is unwound from the feeding shaft. Then, the printer is configured such that a portion of the ink absorption body, which is hung between the feeding shaft and the winding shaft, is pressed on a nozzle forming surface of the recording head by a pressing member and then closely comes into contact with the nozzle forming surface. As a result, the ink attached to the nozzle forming surface of the recording head is absorbed by the ink absorption body and is removed.
However, in the printer described above, when the ink does not evenly attached to the entire nozzle forming surface of the recording head, a region, in which the ink attached to the nozzle forming surface of the recording head is not absorbed, occurs in a portion of the ink absorption body which closely comes into contact with the nozzle forming surface of the recording head. Therefore, it is also conceivable that the portion of the ink absorption body once coming into contact with the nozzle forming surface of the recording head repeatedly comes into close contact with the nozzle forming surface of the recording head so as to effectively use the region in which ink is not absorbed in the ink absorption body.
However, in this case, the ink absorption body may repeatedly come into close contact with the nozzle forming surface of the recording head in a state where the ink absorbed in the ink absorption body penetrates and spreads. As a result, on the nozzle forming surface of the recording head, since the ink is transferred from the ink absorption body to the nozzle row including the nozzles ejecting color ink different from the ink which is absorbed in the ink absorption body, there is a concern that color mixing of the ink may occur in nozzles including the nozzle row.